Israel’s Rikhter shot Gold
Sergey RIKHTER of Israel, 20 year-old, surprised everybody by walking into today’s 10m Air Rifle final round with an outstanding qualification score of 599 points, only one point far from the world record. The Israeli shooter had never made into an ISSF world cup final round before, and his best placement so far had been a 17th place at the last ISSF World Cup in Beijing.

Rikhter turned out to be a strong competitor during the final round. The young shooter tried to manage his two-point head start on the followers, but the Hungarian champion Peter Sidi came closer to him shot after shot.  The close neck and neck finished in favour of the young Rikhter, who eventually won his first world cup gold medal with 701.7 points, and a slight margin of 2 tenths of a point on the following Sidi. “This is exciting, I did not expect to finish on the highest step of the podium: this is my fourht time in an international competition!” Rikhter said right after the final match.

104.5 points brought Silver to Peter Sidi.
Hungary’s Peter SIDI performed one of his best matches today, climbing the scoreboard thanks to great shots such as a 10.9 he fired on his fifth final-shot. “I have fired an outstanding final round, 104.5 points! Unfortunately it has not been enough to reach the Gold medal… I have been a little bit unlucky, I missed it by 2 tenths of a point!”

The Hungarian athlete overtook Belarus’ Bubnovic and Norway’s Hansen to move up in second place, and fought right to the last shot to reach Israel’s Rikhter. His efforts resulted in an extreme final of 104.5 points, so that Sidi claimed Silver with a total score of 701.5 (597+104.5) points.

Olympic Silver medallist Zhu grabbed Bronze:
Bronze went to Beijing’s Olympic Silver medallist ZHU Qinan of China, who struggled to get a spot on the podium. Starting in sixth position, he found his best shots in the second half of the match climbing up to the third place. The Chinese champion had a chance to move up in second place, but his last shot of 9.4 points pushed him in third where he eventually closed the round with a total score of 700.6 points (597+103.6 points)

“I keep on searching my best mood, after the Games. The Olympic final of Beijing dried me out, and I am still struggling with finals. Today’s match has been ok, at least the first nine competition shot were in the ten-ring” Said Zhu, who had walked into the last Games as the title-holder, and came out of Beijing’s final hall with a Silver around his neck.

Vitaly BUBNOVICH of Belarus finished in fourth place with a total score of 700.3 points. A shot in the ninth ring, an unlucky 9.4 he fired on his fourth competition shot, turned out to be a fatal mistake that pushed him out of the podium.

Next Finals:
The 10m Air Rifle Women final round will take place at 15.30 Munich time (GMT/UTC+2), this afternoon.

Follow the match on issf-sport.org!